Museum 2.0

JANUARY 15, 2014

This week, my colleague Emily Hope Dobkin has a beautiful guest post on the Incluseum blog about the Subjects to Change teen program that Emily runs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Subjects to Change is an unusual museum program in that it explicitly focuses on empowering teens as community leaders.

Teen 45

Teen Change Museum History 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2009

By a strange and lucky coincidence, I was at the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum (EMPSFM) in Seattle for a two-day workshop. EMPSFM is one of a handful of museums worldwide for which the death of the King of Pop is a very big deal. Are museums only relevant when they can serve our most pressing needs?

Museum 34

Museum Teen Learning Music 34

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2009

Over the past year, I've noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? Teens are a known (and somewhat controllable) entity.

Teen 24

Teen Participatory Experiment Museum 24

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. You see the overall value of the project.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. First, exhibits that invite self-expression appeal to a tiny percentage of museum audiences.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

Museum 2.0

JULY 26, 2010

From a museum perspective, I think there's a lot to learn from these venues' business models, approach to collecting and exhibiting work, and connection with their audiences. Machine Project (Los Angeles, CA). This list is by no means exhaustive: please add your favorites (especially non-American ones) in the comments.

Culture 49

Culture Alternative St. Louis Los Angeles 49

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2013

Like a lot of organizations, my museum struggles with two conflicting goals: The museum should be for everyone in our community. At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we''re approaching this challenge through a different lens: social bridging. And rarely the twain shall meet. Why fight it?

Museum 55

Museum Social Arts History 55

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Recently, I was giving a presentation about participatory techniques at an art museum, when a staff member raised her hand and asked, "Did you have to look really hard to find examples from art museums? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?" I was surprised by her question.

Museum 29

Museum Difference Participatory History 29

Museum 2.0

APRIL 6, 2011

Let's say you spend a year working with a group of teens to co-create an exhibition, or you invite members and local artists to help redesign the lobby. In many cases, once the final project is launched, it's hard to detect the participatory touch. Community processes are both exciting and time-consuming. An interactive changes that.

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Participatory Process Museum Children 48

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2011

There's the barrier of the concern that this work is "social work" and not art--and therefore doesn't belong in a museum or a theater. Reading the report, I kept thinking of Rick Lowe, the artist and community activist behind Project Row Houses in Houston. He got to see the museum process from the inside.

Arts 52

Arts Fund Artist Houston 52

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 3, 2005

Some of the entries of what you can read on the Walker Blog, may appear at first glance to be mundane details of cube life , but then you remember that it is a museum blog and it makes the institution seem more human. This Walker Blog let's us peer into the inner workings of the art institution.

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Artist Arts Process Remix 50

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 24, 2011

This post features an interview with Sarah Schultz, a museum staffer at one of the institutions Light profiled in the book (the Walker Art Center). It's the ability for me to work with my CFO to be able to budget and align the right kinds of resources for new projects. A crew that has the capacity to build a sign at the last minute.

Arts 46

Arts Interview Teen Artist 46

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2012

Last Friday, I witnessed something beautiful at my museum. A group in their late teens/early 20s were wandering through the museumwide exhibition on love. At the adjacent table, my colleague Stacey Garcia was meeting with a local artist, Kyle Lane-McKinley, to talk about an upcoming project. Kyle had brought his baby with him.

Community 42

Community Teen Build Social 42

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. It was an opportunity for people who participate with Ze Frank's projects online to come together in real space and connect with him and with each other.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 20, 2019

I tell the story of the one-man band because I think many museum professionals feel like him. But, most importantly, few museum professionals have a free hand or moment. Museums rarely have the funding to replicate positions. If you have a teen program running, there are no second teen programs person out drumming up business.

Museum 29

Museum Accessibility Articulate Teen 29

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." hour at the Museum. I made $26/hour at NASA and $7.25/hour

Museum 52

Museum Participatory Boston Interview 52

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2013

But this job is really important to the future of our museum, and I’m hoping that you or someone you know might be a great fit for it. We are hiring for a School Programs Coordinator to wrangle the 3,500+ students and their teachers who come to the museum every year for a tour and hands-on experience in our art and history exhibitions.

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Program Museum Work History 39

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 1, 2006

Want to bring the spirit of this blog to your colleagues and projects? specializes in designing museum experiences and exhibitions that are community informed, socially stimulating, technologically ambitious, and intriguingly experimental. Ready to turn your institution into a site of participatory engagement?

Museum 21

Museum Professional Service Participatory 21

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

For this reason, I spoke specifically about how to make dream projects possible at real institutions. Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Sounds like there might be some overlap with your museum audience? Both geocaching and museums are fundamentally about exploration and discovery.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Arts Project 20

NTEN

JUNE 21, 2011

The speakers for this panel include: Tracy Fullerton - Electronics Arts Game Innovation Lab Ruth Cohen - American Museum of natural History Elaine Charnov - The NY Public Library Jason Eppink - Museum of the Moving Image Syed Salahuddin - Babycastles Elaine Cohen: The New York Public Library 100 Years of the flagship library in New York.

Game 52

Game Culture Change Museum 52

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The Walker Art Center is turning its teen website over to the teens.

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Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This summer, I worked with the Chabot Space & Science Center on a design institute in which eleven teens from their Galaxy Explorers program designed media pieces for an upcoming Smithsonian exhibition on black holes. There was no initial design, no graphics, and no idea of where the teen' work would fit into an overall structure.

Teen 20

Teen Volunteer Create Design 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. The visitor is given a copy of her poster and the museum keeps a copy as well.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

Museum 2.0

APRIL 30, 2007

James Yasko is writing an article for an upcoming issue of Museum News on museums and Web 2.0. Here's the question: What advice do you have, as one who keeps up with technology as it relates to museums, to a group looking to incorporate Web 2.0 Executive, marketing, content, and IT/web folks all have a stake in these projects.

Museum 20

Museum Advice Interview Web 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2015

This week marks five years since the book The Participatory Museum was first released. Across the museum field, the questions about visitor participation have gone from "what?" Over the past four years, I''ve been running a small regional art and history museum in Santa Cruz, CA. and "why?" to "how?".

Participatory 20

Participatory Museum Empowerment Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2017

This is the second installation in a series of posts on the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH)'s development of Abbott Square , a new creative community plaza in downtown Santa Cruz. We built specific community processes appropriate to each step of the project development. Community stakeholders made this a community project.

Community 34

Community Build Arts History 34

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 You''re in for a treat, with upcoming posts on creativity, collections management, elitism, science play, permanent participatory galleries, partnering with underserved teens, magic vests, and more.

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Museum Participatory Reflection Conference 35

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. We made a giant mobile for the center of the museum out of origami birds folded from visitor comments received in the past year.

Participatory 44

Participatory Museum History International 44

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

This technique was used in the Slavery in New York exhibition at the New-York Historical Society and continues in the popular StoryCorps project. Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors."

Design 31

Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2007

Last week, Elaine Gurian and I talked about radical change in museums. Former museum start-up queen, Jen is taking a small organization whose goal is to promote girls’ involvement in math and science through research and programming to new, innovative, exciting places. Braincake isn’t some fakey attempt to pander to teens.

Interview 20

Interview Museum Teen Myspace 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Community First Program Design At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History , we've gravitated towards a "community first" program planning model. My answer: neither.

Teen 20

Teen Museum Voice Arts 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

Sure, it's social, but people stick to their own "pods"--families, teens, adults--and don't diverge or merge. Out on the boardwalk, or at the zoo or a museum, there's a common experience of the sights, sounds, smells, activities of the place. Ideas participatory museum Unusual Projects and Influences visitors.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Teen Game 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. This spanned all the projects. This is a question we grappled with in the Tech Virtual project.

Slides 20

Slides Participatory Museum Children 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 13, 2007

The essays in this section, on “Expressing and Co-Creating,” present projects in which visitors create exhibition content, contribute to its creation, or get a heavy done of meaning-making in their experience of museum content. Who controls the content in the museum? Who controls the museum experience? Of course not.

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Voice Create Museum Arts 20